Azerbaijan Keeps Mum about Bust on Georgia Heroin Highway

Even in the best of times, the Azerbaijani government is not a talkative bunch. But their stone-wall silence after northern neighbor Georgia triumphantly confiscated roughly $175-million worth of liquid heroin on the Georgian-Azerbaijani border has sparked questions about the reasons for their reserve.

On July 11, Georgian border police found a record 2.79 tons of liquid heroin inside 93 30-kilogram containers of handwash conveyed by a cargo-truck from Azerbaijan to Georgia. A video released by the Georgian interior ministry shows that the containers bore Georgian flags and the inscription “Georgia Clean.” The cargo truck displays a slightly blurred name of “GB” or “G3” and the marking “Internationale Spedition.”

In a July-25 statement to a Georgian parliamentary committee, Georgian Interior Minister Aleksandre Chikaidze claimed that the shipment belonged to Afghanistan’s Taliban, who, he alleged, had financed its dispatch to Europe, the news magazine Tabula reported. Two Georgian citizens have been detained in connection with the shipment.